Self-love is not only about the body, the human appearance. It goes far beyond that. And I don’t think we should love ourselves. It is ok not to love ourselves. Being ok with not loving ourselves is self-love. It is the beginning of real self-love for me. Feeling ok as we are. It is not a should, not something that requires time, neither change or effort. It is possible right now. And from that place of relaxation, it is much easier to love the body. We are coming from love, or at least a better feeling mood than when we feel broken and are trying to fix that with self-love.
Pleasure is one side of self-love. Anything that makes us feel better and more relaxed is very important but not enough. Ultimately self-love is the courage to be as we are without judgments and without trying to change that. It is saying yes to ourselves even if that implies saying no to loved ones, family, culture…, it is talking to ourselves, thinking of ourselves, in loving ways always, especially when we feel ashamed or guilty or ugly. It is falling in love with ourselves and trusting our feelings more than our thinking. And that implies knowing ourselves deeply. So, among taking care of the body, it is the courage to go inward to face the unknown. And ask uncomfortable questions like “Who am I?”, “Is it true? “, “What do I really want and why?”. As well as the courage to answer honestly and live from those answers.
Everything goes by two in what I like to call the game of time. The known and the unknown are both necessary for a healthy life but one has to come first. The way we usually live is to put the known first. We put the external first, we take it for reality and we let it dictate how we feel. It leads to lots of suffering. That suffering is not wrong at all, it is here to help. We start the game as unconscious of the game and its rules and we evolve to more and more consciousness about it, about ourselves. Leading to more and more freedom from suffering. Freedom from suffering means the freedom to suffer consciously, with no negative judgments about it. What happens when we see that suffering guides us toward more clarity? When we understand the game and how to play it? And we act on that understanding, playing by its rules even if that means our known world gets destroyed and we have to die of who we think we are (what we fear most)? Suffering ends. Not pain or discomfort. These are inevitable in this game of duality but they pass more easily and don’t evolve into suffering anymore.
We talk a lot about self-love but do we know who that self is? Are we who we think we are? As stupid as this question sounds at first, if we are suffering and struggling to love ourselves, I recommend the inward journey of inquiry, awareness and feelings. I recommend going deeper than the appearances, the bodies, the thoughts, the events. Deeper than memory, forgetting our past for a moment. Because if we are wrong about who we are, can true self-love be possible? Suffering tells us to stop, observe, question, and make new choices from more clarity.
Clarity comes when we put the internal first, without denying the external. They go together, we just have to inverse the priorities. It takes us into a courageous journey where we first see how confused we are before seeing how powerful and free we are. The journey starts now, nothing needs to change for that. Change will naturally follow. We’ve got to do the internal work and let this work inspire our thoughts and actions. This is how the external world becomes more loving and peaceful. We do it for ourselves but it is for everything and everyone. It is not selfish, it is selfless.
In the timeless loving or not loving ourselves is equal. What matters is who is loving or not loving. In time, taking care of our bodies matters for a happy dream, a happy game. Maybe taking care of ourselves means not doing much, maybe it means doing a lot, what matters is how it feels. Doing (not doing included as not doing is still doing something, it is a decision made by a body) as much as possible of everything we feel/think we need. Anything that makes us feel relaxed because we cannot go deeply inward if we are feeling shit and very heavy. I think it is important to feel a bit relaxed on the external before going in. It is a delicate journey. A very beautiful and also often very chaotic journey into freedom. The freedom to suffer and the freedom to transform that suffering, because we love ourselves, not because we are broken and suffering is wrong. What a relief! I wish that for my world, that’s why I am on that journey and shares it J
